Aerial Uptake

September 5, 2019

John Mills

The University of Central Lancashire’s Civic Drone Centre – a collaboration between the Media Innovation Studio and the Engineering Innovation Centre – and Preston City Council are collaborating on the new Aerial Uptake project. This cross-European initiative is geared towards both to better understand barriers to drone technology and removing them to help foster economic growth and societal benefit.

At its core, Aerial
Uptake aims to remove barriers that hinder the successful application of
innovative drone technology across the European Union. While drone applications
have promising potential in the fields of public safety, logistics and
agriculture, a lacking European level playing field and limited knowledge and
public acceptance of this emerging technology call for improved regional
development policies to overcome these barriers.

Aerial Uptake
officially started on 1 August 2019, and its first phase will run for two years.
The Preston partners join a number of European partners consisting of
municipalities, regional governments and research institutes: Province of
Overijssel and City of Enschede (The Netherlands), Government of Catalonia and
I2CAT (Spain), City of Osijek (Croatia), Rzeszow Regional Development Agency
(Poland), Preston City Council and University of Central Lancashire (United
Kingdom) and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.

In Preston, the
project will be led by UCLan’s Civic Drone Centre – a collaboration between the
university’s new £30 million Engineering Innovation Centre and the Media
Innovation Studio research group – and Preston City Council.